Newbie needs help w/ scripts!?!

[vegiedrmr]

Hi everyone! I've just been bitten by the FMP bug and love this stuff! But I need a bit of help...

I'm trying to create a db for my band. I have a layout for entering musician's info (instrument, address, phone, etc.) I use a pop-up menu to choose the instrument they play. I would like to find a way to have this person's name added (automatically) to a pop-up list of other similar type instrumentalists.

Example: Joe is a pianist. While entering his contact info, I use a value list with different instruments (piano, drums, guitar, bass, etc.) and choose piano. In another layout, I have pulldown menus that help me input the musician's names quickly (along with their phone numbers in another feid to the right). When I pu in Joe's name in the first layout, he's automatically entered into pulldown list on the other layout.

Is this possible? I'm so new to this and I don't know if I need to get a script or some other way of doing it. Help!! Thanks!!

[Anatoli]

Just set the value list to take values from that field.

[CobaltSky]

If you want the second pop-up list to include only the names of pianists within the database, you might wish to consider establishing a relationship between the 'instrumentalist type' field on your second layout, and your 'musician-type' field on the first layout.

Then if you create a value list which takes values from the 'musician name' field, and select the option in the Define Value Lists dialog for 'only related values', your value list will be conditional, and will only include the names of musicians whose contact details match the entry you have made in the 'instrumentalist type' field on your second layout.

This approach can work regardless of whether the layouts and fields associated with them are in the same or different files (if they are in the same file, the relationship would be what is called a 'self-join', where the file is linked to itself).

Hope you find these suggestions useful.

[vegiedrmr]

Thanks! I'm still having trouble - I've done what you said, but when I go into browse mode and click on the field, it says "no values defined". So I must have missed something.

I built a relationship between 'musicians to pianists' and 'pianists to musicians' but I think it's not getting through for some reason. Any more help will be greatly appreciated!!

[CobaltSky]

It does sound as though the problem is with your relationships, or perhaps with the data on which they are based. If you've correctly set up the value list to be based on the relationship and the relationship is valid (eg the target field is indexed), then the 'no values defined' message probably indicates that there are no matching entries in the corresponding match fields.

Bear in mind that if your relationship is between fields called "musicians" and "pianists", text in the musicicans field which is not exactly the same as text in the pianists field will not match with an entry of in the pianists field. For example, 'piano soloist' in the pianists field will not match with 'concert pianist', 'piano player' or 'keyboard accompanist' in the musicians field.

If mismatches of data are the source of the problem, you can get around this by defining the same value lists for use on both fields. In this case, to get it working you'd first have to do some clean-up of the existing data.

[vegiedrmr]

Ray,

Thanks so much for your help - I'm still trying to get it to work, though. I've checked the relationships, the value lists, but to no avail.

Let me bug you just a little more if you'd be so kind. I'll spell it out in clearer terms...

On the first layout, I have a field named 'Musicians'. This has a pop-up menu of pianist, drummers, trumpets, etc. When I enter a new contact and their particular instrument, I choose from this predefined value list.

On another layout, I'd like to have a pop-up menu named 'Piano' with only the names of pianists in this menu. I'd like them to be added everytime I enter a new name into the db These pianists are coming from the same db that we're working in. (There will also be another 3 pop-up menus for trumpet, tenor, and bass players, but I only need to get one of these things to work!)

When I build the relationships, do I go Musicians::Piano, or Piano::Musicians, or something even more elaborate like Musician=Piano:: Piano???

Again thank you for your time - you seem to know what you're doing, and I think we're very close!

Roger

[CobaltSky]

Hi Roger,

The extra detail you've provided makes it easier to follow what you are doing and what is required.

In order to access the subset of musician's names for a single instrument, you require a constant relationship which will match the literal text 'pianist' with all the corresponding entries in the musician data. This could be achieved by creating a separate constant field (eg a global field with text entered into it, or a calculating field with the formula set to "pianist"). Then you'd require a separate relationship for each instrument type (each relationship would always pick up only the one group of musicians, according to the fixed text in the source field on which it was based).

However a more flexible approach would be to use as the key field for your relationship, a single global field which is linked to the corrseponding value list (a radio button interface may be most appropriate). When entering an instrumentalist on your second layout, you would then first select the instrument type in the radio button field, with the result that a corresponding sub-set of musicians (ie those listed as playing the selected instrument) would then appear in the drop-down list.

So that you can see how this works, I've put together a mini 'working demo' file which uses the technique. It has two very rudimentary layouts and only a couple of fields on each. However it is an unlocked file, so you will be able to 'pull it apart' to see how it works.

The file is available for download from my server at:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/musicdemo.zip

Hope you find this to be of use.